EAST LANSING, Mich.—Wisconsin did not get Michigan State’s best Thursday night. The Izzone was on spring break, the band was out of town and the Spartans couldn’t find the backside of a barn in the first half. The Badgers’ problem was that they couldn’t find it, either. Wisconsin (11-6 Big Ten, 20-10 overall) continued to struggle shooting the basketball, making just 15-of-51 (29 percent) from the field en route to a resounding 58-43 defeat in East Lansing, Mich.
Despite its poor start, UW did climb back into the game late in the first half and looked poised to head into the locker room with momentum. The Badgers took an eight-point deficit down to four as they took over with 38 seconds left for what should have been the final possession of the opening half. However, senior forward Mike Bruesewitz attempted and missed a 3-point shot with over eight seconds remaining, allowing the Spartans to rebound and feed sophomore guard Travis Trice for a deep 3-pointer that sent Wisconsin into the half trailing 25-18.
“It’s a big momentum swing anytime you can hit a 3-pointer like that at the buzzer,” redshirt senior forward Jared Berggren said. “They definitely fed off that, and we kind of let them get rolling from there.”
Although the Badgers missed their fair share of makeable shots, the shot selection was once again well below average. After missing 17 straight attempts from 3-point range to end Sunday’s loss against Purdue, UW attempted 23 3s Thursday night, making just four (17 percent) and giving Michigan State plenty of opportunities to grab a long rebound and run in transition. With the Badgers adding an uncharacteristic 17 turnovers (eight in the first half), the recipe for a blowout defeat was right there for the Spartans’ taking.
“They were jumping passing lanes every time we tried to attack,” UW head coach Bo Ryan said. “I thought they were very aggressive with their hands.”
“We just need to take care of the ball better,” junior guard Ben Brust said. “Seventeen turnovers is just mind-boggling.”
Even while the Spartans were struggling out of the gate, it appeared the Badgers were in for another tough night. Wisconsin allowed second-chance points on two of MSU’s first four possessions, failing to keep the Spartans in check despite forcing difficult shots during the onset of the game.
Although the Badgers would briefly take the lead on a Bruesewitz 3 (snapping a streak of 20 straight misses dating back to Sunday), it would last just 44 seconds and be the last UW would hold before a 10-0 Spartan run put the game’s control squarely in the hands of the home squad. Though Wisconsin would cut into that lead with a 6-2 run of its own in response, the end-of-half-sequence ending with Trice’s 3 would all but seal the Badgers’ fate.
“We were still in there early,” Brust said. “Then we just got into a hole and couldn’t get out of it.”
If a seven-point halftime deficit wasn’t the nail in the coffin, a 16-0 run by Michigan State following a jump shot from Berggren would put to bed any thoughts of an upset in East Lansing. The Spartans took advantage of miss after miss by Wisconsin and turned a 25-20 lead into a 41-20 advantage with just 12:20 left.
“Its always a combination of things. What they’re doing, what we’re not doing,” Ryan said. “You just can’t have those kinds of spells.”
Having squandered its final opportunity at a Big Ten title, Wisconsin now must take care of business Sunday at Penn State and get help from either Indiana (at Michigan) or Illinois (at Ohio State) in order to maintain Ryan’s streak of 11-straight top-four finishes in Big Ten play and to avoid a spot in next Thursday’s first-round game at the Big Ten Tournament.
“With this team, what they’ve done, I’m not trading them,” Ryan said. “We still have another regular season game and that’s all I think about.”
